Smooth dudes: Steely Dan in the groove
With Walter Becker gone to the Babylon Sisters in the sky, Donald Fagen reels in the years as Steely Dan, writes Barry Egan
GIVEN that the band Walter Becker cofounded in 1971 with Donald Fagen went in for “richly ambiguous harmonies rooted in Debussy, Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker and Sonny Rollins” (as the New York Times noted), perhaps Walter Becker’s taste was no surprise at the end.
As he took his very last breath on September 3, 2017, dying from oesophageal cancer, he was listening to the Sophisticated Giant of jazz himself, Dexter Gordon...
Donald spent his last day with his Steely Dan comrade in early September. “When I heard he was really ill, I was on the road in, I think, Salina, Kansas, and I flew back,” Donald recently remembered. “I had a day off and he was in his apartment in New York. And I was really glad that I went. I could see he was really struggling.
“When I put a chair next to the bed, he grabbed my hand. It was something he had never done ever before. And we had a great talk and, you know, he was listening to hard bop — his wife had put on Dexter Gordon records. He was very weak but he was still very funny. I’m really glad I had those hours.”
We are glad, too, that Walter and Donald gave us timeless albums like Aja and so many songs that shaped our lives. We can only hope that upon his death Walter immediately drove — to quote Babylon Sisters — “west on Sunset/To the sea...”
Born Walter Carl Becker in Queens, New York in 1950, he was not your ordinary fellow. He was once asked in an interview: “Your wife is an experimental psychologist. Is that what attracted you to her?” “All our wives are experimental psychologists,” he replied.
When in 1980 he was badly injured when a taxi hit him in New York’s Central Park, his response was typical Walter wit. “We were quantum criminals. The car and I were attempting to occupy the same place at the same time,” he quipped.
In 1995, when he and Donald were asked by Mojo why they decided to go back out on the road with Steely Dan after 19 years, the answers gave an insight into themselves.
Walter: “Well, clearly it was a mistake. We see that now.”
Donald: “Yeah. I’m gonna rescind the whole thing. Can we recall the summer tours of 1993 and 1994?”
Walter: “We’re gonna send all the money back. In fact, anybody who has been to one of our shows in the past two years, if you would be willing to send a stamped, self-addressed envelope to the offices of our business managers, we will cheerfully refund the price of your tickets. There is a $100 filing fee associated with our book-keeping costs, so make sure you include that.”
Pre-Steely Dan, Walter and Donald had been a group called Leather Canary, with a certain comedian Chevy Chase, on drums, so the wit was there from the beginning.
Steely Dan, who are playing Dublin on Thursday, made often beguilingly sophisticated songs — Do It Again, Reelin’ in the Years, Rikki Don’t Lose That Number and Peg — that insinuated themselves from left field into the mainstream.
“That’s sort of what we wanted to do — conquer from the margins,” Walter said in 2011. “Find our place in the middle based on the fact that we were creatures of the margin and of alienation.”
Donald said in an early interview, that; “We think very much the same musically. I can start songs and Walter can finish them.”
With Walter sadly gone now, Donald will have to find a way to finish the songs of Steely Dan on his own. “Your everlasting summer / You can see it fading fast / So you grab a piece of something / That you think is gonna last,” to quote from Reelin’ In The Years.
‘All our wives are experimental psychologists’